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A horse's teeth keep pushing up out of the gum for most of her life as she grinds them down, and when they wear uneven, they leave edges that can cut the inside of her cheek. That's what this looks like.

"I know. I know it hurts." I wipe her slobber off my hand onto my sweatpants. "Every bite you take, something in there cuts you. No wonder you're spitting it out."

She needs a vet with two tools: a speculum to hold her mouth open, and a float, a long steel rasp that files those edges down smooth. Until then, she needs food she doesn't have to grind.

I go through the side door from the pen into the barn. The aisle is swept and quiet, with stalls down one side. On the other side are a feed room and a tack room where the saddles and bridles hang. A couple of horses put their heads over their stall doors to see who I am.

In the feed room I find a bucket and a sack of pressed alfalfa cubes, which people soak for old horses with bad teeth. I scoop the bucket partway full, carry it out to the wash rack, and run the hose over the cubes. In a while they'll fall apart into a soft green mash a horse could eat without a tooth in her head.

While they soak, I take a rubber curry comb from the tack room, go back out to the pen, and work the dried mud off Sadie's shoulder in slow circles.

By the time I'm down to Sadie's ribs, I realize I'm humming. It's "Leaning on the Everlasting Arms." I played it on the piano at First Hill Country Fellowship more Sundays than not, and the curry comb is going around in time to it. I stop, because it's Daddy's church music, and I don't want it in my mouth. Sadie shoves her nose against my hip. Nobody else is here to hear it, so I start again.

When the cubes have turned to mush, I hang the curry comb on the gatepost and go back through the side door for the bucket. I carry it out with my left arm hooked through the handle. My ribs ache at every step.

I hold the bucket for Sadie. She sniffs it, blows into it, and starts eating like she's starving, with her nose buried to the eyes and her tail swishing contentedly at flies.

I stand there with the bucket braced on my hip, and for the first time since I got out, my hands are steady. I still know how to do this.

Sadie is still working on the mash when I hear a truck turn in off the county road and stop at the main gate. That'll be Beckett, coming to take a turn so Knox can eat.

A minute later another engine comes up the drive. I know Knox's truck by now. It stops at the guest house, and his boots go up the steps, heavy and slow, the way he always walks. I'd bet it's so I'll hear him coming. On a morning this still, I can hear every step from the pen. Two knocks.

"Delilah."

I don't answer. The knob rattles. He knocks again, harder, and calls my name loud enough to carry across the yard. Then his boots pound back down the steps at a run.

He thinks I'm gone. For one mean second, I want to stand here and let him tear the place apart hunting me, so somebody besides me gets scared for once.

"Barn," I holler.

The running stops. A moment later he comes around the end of the yard fence from the drive, walking now, straight to me.

Knox stops at the pen gate with the rifle slung across his back. His eyes find me first. Then they drop to Royce's boots on my feet and come back up. His jaw sets at the sight of them, and he takes hold of the gate hard enough to rattle it on its hinges.

"My rule was the yard," he says. "You broke it. You locked your door and walked off, so I couldn't tell if you were in there bleeding on the floor. Next time you step out of that house, you leave the door open or a note on it."

"Your mare's quit eating her hay." I tip the bucket so he can see the mash. "Look under her rack."

He looks. Chewed wads of hay cover the dirt, the old ones dried brown and the new ones still green on top.

"Her cheek's hot and puffy over her upper teeth. She needs her teeth floated. I'm pretty sure there's a sharp hook on the corner of one, but I'm not putting my hand back there to find out. She chews until it hurts too much and drops the hay." I nod at the ground. "From the look of it, she's been at it a day or two."

He comes into the pen, picks up one of the dried wads, and turns it over in his scarred fingers. He tosses it down and goes to Sadie's head and lays his palm over her left cheek like he's done it a thousand times. She flinches when he reaches the swelling. He presses once more to be sure, then lets her go back to the bucket.

"I had every hand on the gate and none in the barn," he says. "That's on me."

He pulls out his phone and thumbs a number. "Nell. It's Knox. Bay mare's dropping her hay, left cheek's swollen over the upper teeth. Delilah figures there's a hook. Today if you can." He listens. "Tomorrow, first thing, then. She's on soaked cubes till you get here."

He hangs up, steps back to lean on the rail, and looks at the bucket. "Hector keeps those cubes in the feed room, but you already found them." One corner of his mouth lifts. "Hector's going to sulk for a week. He thinks that mare tells him everything."

He doesn't look at the boots again or at the vet wrap. He looks at my face and keeps looking. In a year, no man has looked at me that long without wanting something. While I've got his attention, I ask for what I want.

"I'm good for more than sitting behind a door, Hollister," I say. "I want to go to town."

"No."

"I'm not asking your permission. I'm asking for a ride."